Let me start by saying I’m not a fan of the cancellation and renumbering of long standing series, but I understand it from a business standpoint. I’ve had the luxury of seeing the title I’m most invested in maintain a continuous run since I began collecting, but that ended two weeks ago. Marvel Comics published the final issue of Uncanny X-Men to make way for a new post-Schism relaunch to go along with Wolverine and the X-Men as part of this Fall’s X-Men: Regenesis. Putting the renumbering and relaunch aside, the series’ conclusion was remarkably sentimental and left me with a genuine sense of loss.

Spoilers for Uncanny X-Men #544 will follow.

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I am an unabashed fan and reader of Marvel Comics’ X-Men, but I am also a collector. As a consequence, I’ll go out of my way to track down variant covers of issues from most titles in the X-franchise. A quick disclaimer before we go on, I know the interior pages are identical, I know the book will not command the price I’ll pay for it going forward, and I know I can get a high resolution digital version of the cover image on my computer that will be far more accessible long term. I seek this stuff out because I want it in my collection. It’s OK if you want to consider it a disorder, disease or other malady; synonyms are really just variant covers for words.

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For the past two weeks, Marvel Comics has been releasing a set of their trademark silhouetted teaser images, this time focusing on the X-Men line. With the promise of big changes to the X-Men’s status quo following the current Schism series by Jason Aaron, these teasers suggest a very different landscape for Marvel’s mutants beyond Cyclops simply being at odds with Wolverine. It appears that Regenesis will be a line wide revamp similar in nature to 2004’s X-Men: ReLoad and 2000’s X-Men: Revolution/Counter-X.

The initial promotional image for November’s X-Men: Regenesis focused on the division between characters that would be part of the new Wolverine and the X-Men title and the relaunching Uncanny X-Men. As these latest teasers have rolled out, we now see that no less than eight ongoing X-titles will be part of Regenesis.

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I had already planned to write about the X-Men today with the movie premiering last weekend and lots of other X related stuff always on my mind, but Marvel’s announcement that they’re canceling Uncanny X-Men at issue #544 in October took things in an “all new, all different” direction.

I haven’t said much about it here, but a big summer X-Men event called Schism is starting next month under Marvel’s MMXI – Year of the Mutants banner. The premise is that Cyclops and Wolverine will finally reach an irreconcilable point of disagreement and the X-Men will be divided as never before. The creative team of writer Jason Aaron and artists Carlos Pacheco, Frank Cho, Daniel Anuña, Alan Davis and Adam Kubert sounds phenomenal, but as a mini series announced in the midst of three other major events affecting the X-Men line (Fear Itself, X-Men: First to Last and Age of X) I wasn’t sure what to make of it. I certainly didn’t expect it to lead to the “cancellation” of the flagship Uncanny X-Men.

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When Marvel’s May solicitations appeared earlier this month a group of books were very conspicuous by their absence. Four X-Men titles (Uncanny X-Men, X-Men: Legacy, New Mutants, and Uncanny X-Force) had no listings and it was clear that something was up. Last week Marvel released a set of teaser images for these titles and they’re giving more details all this week on Marvel.com. Every day at 3PM Marvel will host a series of “liveblogs” focusing on what they’re calling MMXI: Year of the X-Men featuring X-editor Nick Lowe and the creators behind each of these titles kicking off yesterday with New Mutants.

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